Goga Ashkenazi, Kazakh oil billionaire turned fashion designer, is sitting on a grey sofa in the garden of her wedding-cake house in Holland Park, a few doors down from the Beckhams, which she bought nine years ago for £28 million in cash.
Spring sunshine beats down on the back of her long, slender neck with a tattoo of a zip along the nape. A cherry tree is in blossom; stone steps lead past a fountain to a statue of an elephant coated in glinting golden pennies. The uniformed butler has just brought her green tea on a silver tray and been dispatched to find sunglasses, as Ashkenazi, 36, recalls the past few days.
“So, I was in Barbados with my children and mother and father